To Walk in LA

is to curse the person
who urged you to move out here
saying
you could always move back
but no one ever moves back
from the swirling vortex
where nothing happens
where no one has walked for months
years
decades
millennia

Now addicted to mocha iced coffee drinks
and valet parking
the light of the sun so bright
you get away without reading glasses
five more years than you should
wear shorts 363 days
even though your bottom has spread
like an IHOP pancake
from sitting all the time
driving driving driving

But you can’t drive now
your car broke down
a fate worse than your screenplay being passed on at Paramount
your new bungalow in the hills on a fault line
your herbalist dead from lyme disease

So you walk in LA
and to walk in LA
is to
stick out in LA
the face without the lift
the extra roaming the back lot
searching for the studio door
an entry into the world